After a three-month trip across the Middle East and Europe, refugee puppet Little Amal arrived in Sheffield on Friday to wander the city before her journey’s end in Manchester.
She is the figurehead of ‘The Walk’, a project to challenge views of refugees and their plight as a roaming festival of art and music.
The 3.5m tall puppet, piloted by a stilt-walker and two other team members who independently control her arms, entered the city by narrowboat via the River Don to be greeted by the reportedly 4000 cheering on-lookers that filled Victoria Quays that afternoon.
There, she was disassembled and packed into large crates to be rebuilt at Tudor Square.
Once ready, Little Amal ‘danced’ to drumbeats beneath handmade flags with words of welcome written across them that were created in workshops held earlier in the day.
She then played with smaller puppets crafted by the local community, lit up from within to create a lightshow of woodland creatures, before the storybook procession made their way to the Peace Gardens.
A brass band sounded her arrival as she danced beneath the words of poet Andrew Motion’s “What If”, normally visible on the side of Sheffield Hallam University’s Owen Building on Howard Street, this time projected onto the front of the Town Hall.
The only hiccup during the celebrations was when Amal stumbled to the ground for a moment, though most of the sizeable turnout seemed to be too distracted by the fireworks being launched in time with the band’s renditions of various recognisable pop songs.
Amal was thanked for her arrival in Sheffield, as were those who came to see her for providing a “Sheffield welcome”. She will make a pit stop in Barnsley before concluding her journey in Manchester on 3 November.
